In 1892, the first professional football game was played in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Athletic Association defeated the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, 4-0. Touchdowns at the time were worth 4 points.

In 1893, the Durand Line which marks the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was agreed to by Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in British India, and the Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan.

In 1927, Joseph Stalin consolidated power in the Soviet Union following the expulsion of Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Communist Party.

In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt pressed the Presidential Gold Key to officially open the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

In 1941, the German army's drive to take Moscow was halted on the city's outskirts in World War II.

In 1948, a war crimes tribunal in Japan sentenced former premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death by hanging. Tojo survived a suicide attempt three years earlier days after Japan had surrendered.

In 1954, after processing more than 12 million immigrants, the immigration station at Ellis Island closed its doors for the last time.

In 1980, the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed Saturn and sent back stunning pictures.

In 1982, former KGB chief Yuri Andropov succeeded the late Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

In 1990, Akihito was installed as the 125th emperor of Japan.

In 1997, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were convicted of involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. They were sentenced to life in prison. Four others had been convicted in 1994 and also received life sentences.

In 2001, an American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport in New York, killing 265 people, including five on the ground.

In 2003, actor Art Carney, who won fame and Emmy Awards as sewer worker Ed Norton on the Honeymooners TV show in the 1950s and an Oscar in 1974 for Harry and Tonto, died at age 85.

In 2011, Silvio Berlusconi, longest serving Italian prime minister since Benito Mussolini, announced his resignation after the lower house of Parliament passed economic policies demanded by the European Union.

A thought for the day: "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." -- Kurt Vonnegut